A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Recently our neighbors got a puppy. It was mainly for the granddaughter (and nanny) since pap is not real keen on dogs. Well, they decided that they weren’t going to be able to keep it, so they asked Band Mom if we wanted to take it in. Well of course Band Mom wanted it and so did Things 1 & 2. I on the other hand was not so thrilled by the concept. Now you must understand I love dogs. Which is why we ALREADY HAVE ONE! Oh and 3 cats. Also our dog, Loki, is not the friendliest animal towards other animals, especially dogs.

Last year Band Mom tried to convince me to get a puppy as well. To prove that it would work they brought the puppy in the house to introduce it to Loki. They put the puppy down and let go of Loki to see how they got along. Loki instantly grabbed the puppy by its neck and pinned it to the ground. If the puppy would have been dumb enough to try to escape, I’m pretty convinced Loki would have bit the thing in half. We got Loki off of the puppy and the puppy was quickly removed from the house.

This plan for the new puppy has been in the works for at least a few days now. The neighbors have been bringing Daisy over during the day while Loki was outside on his chain and acclimating him to her. So at least he wouldn’t use her as a chew toy. Then I got sad eyes from Band Mom and Things 1 & 2 when my initial answer was pretty much “No fuckin’ way!” In a moment of weakness I agreed to a 1 week trial. If the animals could get along, the puppy managed to stay alive, and the puppy didn’t damage anything of value in the house it could stay.

What was I thinking?

So the puppy has now been in the house for a couple of days. There has been no blood spilled. Nothing has been chewed up to the point of it not being usable or recognizable. Thing 1 has taken responsibility of taking the puppy out in the mornings if Band Mom or I aren’t up, or I’m getting ready for work. Loki is not thrilled, but as long as the puppy keeps its distance he tolerates it. When she gets too close or too wound up, Loki reminds her that he is larger, has many more teeth and can be quite aggressive. Between him and our Alpha cat, Bandit, the puppy should be kept in its place. Even Loki learned not to mess with Bandit as a puppy when she was kind enough to rip out his third eyelid on one of his eyes. For a small declawed house cat, she can hold her own. The other two cats have pretty much just stayed out of view for the past few days.

One thing that needs to change though is the puppy’s sleep schedule. I don’t get up for work until between 7 and 7:30. The damn puppy has been getting up around 6. If we can just get that extra hour and a half or so more sleep, I will be much happier. She’s having a few accidents in the house, but the house breaking is actually coming along pretty good. Granted I think she has no bladder since as soon as she takes a drink if you don’t get her outside you get a puddle.

As much as I was initially against it, I think it may work out…

More Guitar Hero

I was kinda annoyed this week with GameStop this week. A few weeks ago, when I stopped in to get a second guitar controller for the PS2, I put in a pre-order for Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks The 80s. I was pretty sure that it came out on the 24th and I never got a call. So Friday after work I headed out to see what was up. They had plenty in stock and gave me credit for my pre-order so I didn’t throw a fit at them for not calling.

I took the game home and Thing 1 and I played cooperative mode for a while. After that I played solo to open up some more sets for multi-player mode. After dinner, Band Mom and I played head-to-head for a while. After that Band Mom headed to bed and I stayed up playing solo for a while. I ended up finishing easy with all 5 stars or perfects on the first try. I don’t know if this version is easier or the fact that I’ve been playing on hard for so long on Guitar Hero 2 that it just seemed easy.

I’m a little disappointed in the game though. It only has 30 songs compared to the 40 of GH2. There are no bonus songs that you can buy. It has the same guitars and finishes for sale as GH2. I feel a little gipped for $50. Don’t get me wrong. Its fun and the song selection is decent. But its just not a step up from GH2 its almost a step down…

Rock Stock '07

Saturday Rock was throwing a party. He went all out. He made a ton of ribs and wings and his mom supplied any non-meat related dish. Band Mom and I got there about 5 and Scott and his girlfriend and a few others were already there. Slowly people started showing up. The plan for the evening included the debut of our new band and a performance from Keyz’s new band Desendsion. As soon as we got there the Spinal Tap-ish events started.

The first thing I had to do was get the new power amps that Rock and I had picked up a couple of weeks ago. Well 2 things we didn’t think about. 1) Getting patch cables to connect the crossover to the power amps. I got around that by using 20′ cables to travel the 6 inches I needed. 2) The new power amps don’t have 1/4 inch outputs just Twist-Loc and banana clips. What kind of cords do we have to connect the monitors? Thats right 1/4 inch cables. So I had to use an old amp that was still partially working for the monitors. No big deal.

Then we all grabbed some grub and started setting up the stage. Rock had a goose-neck trailer that we played on at a party last year to act as a stage for the evening. Now the original plan was that the first band should start playing around 7pm (while its still light out). It was getting to be around 7 and the first band (Desendsion) wasn’t even there yet. Which was okay for now since we didn’t have the stage ready anyway. Suddenly here comes a group of cars that we don’t know anyone in. Yeah! Its Desendsion. Except Keyz isn’t with them. Turns out Keyz (the only member of the band that has ever been to Rock’s) got off at the wrong exit!! He ended up getting there about a half hour later.

Okay well lets get this thing rolling. Travis brought a generator to power the stage. It looked kinda small and I was getting nervous that it wouldn’t be able to supply enough power to run the stage and lights. Boy was I mistakin’! It actually was pushing way too much voltage. The power conditioners instantly went into safe mode and I couldn’t turn on any of the stage equipment. Who’da thunk that this dinky generator would push over 130V (should have been 120V) per outlet. Okay now what? Well Rock’s brother took off and went to his house and got a ginourmous extension cord that we then ran into Rock’s garage to power everything.

Now its dark and we need the lights. Oh goody both light bars are busted so they don’t raise above 4 feet or so. Well at least everyone will be able to see our shoes. It actually wasn’t that bad, but it was a bit dark on stage. Desendsion got up and played a very energetic set. The guys in the band were very cool and were able to self censor since they weren’t really expecting the family show atmosphere that we had. They played mostly originals which was very cool. Hopefully they all had fun. (We did and I think we will hopefully be playing more shows with them in the future!)

Now it was our turn. I must admit, I didn’t think I would, but halfway through their set, I started getting butterflies. This would be the first time that I had to front a band for a whole set. For years I have come out from behind the sound board to do back-ups here and there and the occasional lead vocal, but this is the first time the whole show was on my shoulders. Since I wasn’t behind the board, Band Mom ran sound for the night. With a little help from me, Bill, Sal, and pretty much every body else (thats the joy of running sound, everyone’s an expert and is going to let you know it!) she did a great job, especially considering it was pitch dark at the sound board.

A little back story here: A couple of weeks ago Travis got himself injured and was not medically allowed to play for a while. So last week we practiced with Pete so he could sit in tonight. Travis was medically cleared to play on Wednesday, but we still wanted to get Pete up for a few since he did put in the time to learn the tunes. So we started the set with Pete on drums. My nerves were shot. Our first song was one that I (know now anyway) probably shouldn’t be singing much less opening our set with. After that I slowly got more comfortable. After two songs we got Travis up to finish the set. It was fun. Could it have been better. You bet! Having our first show at Rock’s party with a friendly crowd was definitely a good idea. We were able to see where we have issues, without too much hassle.

I definitely needed to get one show out of the way. Hopefully now I will be able to loosen up on stage. I probably could have put a card board cutout of me up there and sang from offstage and the crowd would have gotten the same stage show out of me. That’s something I’ll definitely be working on from now on. One good thing is we ended strong. Our final two songs are two that I definitely love to sing and the band loves to play. Godsmack’s Bad Religion and Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name Of. I had to change some lyrics because of the family show, but they were still fun. Thing 1 recognized Killing from Guitar Hero and Thing 2 was head bangin’ down front and throwin’ me the \m/ horns.

After we finished we got a jam going for the rest of the night. First we got the second guitarist from Desendsion up on drums with Keyz on bass, Rock on guitar and me on vocals to do a few. Then Bill jumped up on drums for a couple. The next switch was Donnie from Ruff Creek up on bass and some lead vocals. Later we got Sal up on guitar and Santi up on drums. There was a flashback to the Initial Contact days! The jamming was a ton of fun, even if Jason wouldn’t get up and sing a few!

After that we slowly tore down everything as people started leaving. After everything was down, there was still a small group left. We hung out had a few more and BSed about everything. Pandora did a little palm reading and was pretty darn accurate at it!

Well the first show is out of the way. There is some work to do. Keep an eye out ’cause now its on. We will be working out the kinks and gettin’ our asses out there soon.

Thanks to everyone who came and listened to us. Thanks for all of the feedback! We intend to take it all and use it to our advantage.

A House Full Of (Wannabe) Musicians

Tuesday after work I headed to my voice lesson. Yes, I decided to start vocal lessons. I figured that if I’m going to sing in a band I might as well do it correctly. I started on my birthday so this is my 3rd lesson. Anyway, tonight Band Mom and Things 1 & 2 came with me to the shop to look around while I was in my lesson. The reason they were looking around was because both girls want to start playing an instrument. Thing 1 had decided that she wants to learn guitar. So Band Mom found a cool 1/2 size acoustic guitar starter kit for her. Thing 2 wants to learn the violin. So they had an 1/8 size violin that we are now renting for her. Luckily Band Mom played the violin for years in jr/sr high so she can teach her the basics.

After dinner we busted out the instruments and Band Mom worked with Thing 2 and the violin while I worked with Thing 1 on the guitar. Not that I can play guitar, but the lessons that are in this child guitar method book that they picked up even I can handle. Now every night there will be at least a 1/2 hour set aside to work on the new instruments.

We are either some day going to have a house full of musicians or a neighborhood of howling cats and dogs…

Practice Sans Drummer

Sunday, Band Mom had to head up to her Mom’s to take care of her when her Aunt left. Things 1 & 2 were originally going to accompany her but my folks called in the morning and wanted to know if the girls would rather go swimming. Hmm, tough choice for them…So a little after noon my folks picked up the kids and took them. Then around 1 Band Mom headed out. I had the house to myself for a while.

About 4:30 I headed over to Rock’s for practice. This was our last practice before our first gig. We’ll be playing next week at Rock’s party. One major problem with this debut gig…Our drummer is out of commission for a few weeks. So Trav called Pete (the original Shot:30 drummer) to see if he could sit in for him. After the promise of a short set and plenty of booze at practice and the party, Pete was in.

Practice went quicker than we had anticipated. By 7:30 we had pretty much decided on and played through 10 songs, and given Pete our practice CDs to take home for the week to brush up. We’ll probably play 12 or 13 songs at the party as we gave Pete 3 songs on top of the ten that if he could pick up this week we are going to play next week.

After practice I headed home and let the dog out for a little bit. Then I was off at 8:30 to pick up Things 1 & 2 at my folks. We left there and headed out to BFE to pick up Pooh. She was at her boyfriend’s sister’s graduation party. We got her then headed to Band Mom’s Mom’s. Pooh will be spending the next few days with Band Mom’s Mom to make sure her recovery is coming along. I dropped her off then went home with Things 1 & 2. Band Mom got home about 40 minutes later. Things 1 & 2 were already out and after taking out the trash I was quick to bed.

Grass, Gas Or…

This Saturday I started the day by heading to Krispy Kreme and getting some doughnuts for breakfast. After we ate, I headed out and cut the grass. I had to restring the weed whacker and apparently did a poor job. As I was weed whacking the side of the house the spool popped off. Then I couldn’t find the stupid spring that attaches the spool to the whacker. Well, guess I’m out of weed whacking for a while. After I finished cutting the grass I took a shower, while Band Mom was working on our new laptop doing some data entry for a client.

Mid afternoon we decided it was time for a Wal Mart run. We needed some essentials, plus Band Mom wanted to get a lap top case and maybe a wireless mouse/keyboard for use with the laptop. We ended up not getting a wireless mouse or keyboard, just a PS/2 to USB converter since we have about a gazillion mouses and keyboard laying around the office. After the store we headed home and Band Mom whipped up some dinner while Things 1 & 2 went outside and played.

After dinner Band Mom got back to work and I did a quick little bit of client work. Then I tried out my new gamepad on GameTap. It worked on most games I tried but not all. Yeah! Another way to waste time. Just what I needed.

The rest of my Birthday Vacation

Thursday and Friday I spent most of the daytime writing code for some Pinnacle clients. After dinner I played video games either on the PS2 or GameTap.

Saturday, Band Mom headed up to her mom’s to help clean and get ready for Band Mom’s Mom’s surgery. My folks took Thing 1 & Thing 2 to the pool so I had the day to myself. I started out writing code. I actually created my first OpenOffice Base database. Not that it was hard, just something I’d never done before. Its just a simple little db for Band Mom to use to enter in a ton of info to be used on one of her Pinnacle client web sites which I was working on. After that I headed out for some birthday shopping.

I started at the mall and hit FYE to use a gift card I got for my birthday. I ended up getting the new Megadeth album, United Abominations and the Ozzfest Ozzfest Second Stage Live CD. Then I headed to the other end of the mall and picked up a second GuitarHero guitar controller and put a pre-order in for the upcoming Guitar Hero Encore Rocks The 80s game.

After that I headed across town and went to Kohl’s to exchange my sister’s gift. Then I stopped at Dick’s to see if I could pick up anything with the gift card I got. Then over to Wal Mart to pick up some stuff for home and exchange one of my gifts. Then I had to go home and get the bank deposit I forgot and head back to the mall to make the deposit.

Then it was back home and I just had to try out the new guitar. I had some dinner and watched some DVRed stuff. Then Band Mom got home and as she worked on Frankensteining a computer we watched Miami Vice. Then I played some more Guitar Hero. Finally we watched the first half of The Legend Of Bagger Vance that Band Mom had DVRed earlier in the week before heading to bed.

Sunday, since Things 1 & 2 spent the night at my folks’ to attend my cousin’s bridal shower on Sunday, and since Band Mom was of to her mom’s again. I was alone again. So Rock came and picked me up. Our first stop was Staples where I picked up a new laptop that was on sale for the house. Then we set off on our real goal for the day. We headed up to Guitar Center and picked up 2 new QSC power amps to replace the 2 dead Carvin ones the band has. We also picked up a new crossover. After that we stopped at Fat Burger for some lunch.

On the way home we stopped at my folks to try and get the picnic table that my dad is giving Rock. I say try because the damn thing didn’t fit in Rock’s truck because of the cap. Rock dropped me at home and headed home himself. A little after 6 I headed back to my folks’ to get Things 1 & 2. We headed home and I made some dinner. After dinner I did a little more work and then Band Mom got home. I headed to bed early compared to the rest of the week since Monday it is back to work…

4th of July!

Somehow Wednesday July 4th, I woke up at 9AM. No hangover…Feeling down right good. The kids had all gone with my parents after the party, and were heading to the 4th of July parade in Canonsburg this morning. So I let Band Mom sleep and I got dressed and headed downstairs. I grabbed a quick bite and checked the news. It looked like rain was coming. So I decided I better get the outside cleaned up before it rained. So I headed out and started cleaning. After I got most of the outside cleaned up, Band Mom woke up and after a cup of coffee joined me in cleaning up. I ran to the store for something and when I got back Band Mom had most of the inside cleaned.

We spent most of the day playing games and goofing off after the cleanup. Around dinner time we headed over to my folks’ for a cookout. We had the usual fare of burgers and dogs, and chatted with some relatives of my Mom’s that were also there. After dinner, we decided to take the kids and head home for the fireworks.

When I first moved in with Band Mom we were able to sit in our backyard and watch the fireworks at the park. Over the years some trees have grown and we have slowly been moving, first into our neighbor’s yard, then into the next yard. This year we were about halfway across the next yard. There was a small drizzle during the fireworks, but it didn’t last long or bother anyone too much. After the fireworks, we headed inside and watched some of the Boston fireworks on TV.

I stayed up late into the night (next morning) playing games…

Happy Birthday To Me

Tuesday was my birthday. I took the day off from work (actually the rest of the week) and enjoyed most of the day playing on my new monitor that Band Mom got me for my birthday (and let me open the night before!). In the early afternoon the Comcast guy showed up to hook up our new service. Band Mom found a bundle that gave us the Comcast Triple Play with more channels on our cable, their VOIP, and the addition of PowerBoost to our internet service for less that we were paying overall with just cable, internet and Vonage. Everything was good except they couldn’t get our Internet set up because the system was down. We had all the new cable channels and the phone, but no Internet. How was I supposed to play on my new monitor on GameTap with no Internet.

Well that finally got resolved a little after 6, but now we were getting ready for people to show up for the birthday part that was set to start at 7. Band Mom had ordered food from Hog Father’s and it was to be delivered at 7. Sal, for the first time ever, was the first person to show up. When Band Mom told him we were getting ribs from Hog Father’s that was motivation enough. A few more people started showing up and then the food was delivered. It turns out they only delivered the ribs, coleslaw, muffins and plates and cutlery and forgot the chicken and baked beans. I thought Band Mom was going to kill someone, but she stayed calm. The delivery lady headed back to the shop to get the rest and more guests started showing up. She came back about a half hour later and everyone started digging in.

Band Mom invited an insane amount of people for the size of our house and back yard. Most of the kids ended up inside for most of the night playing Guitar Hero II while the adults (and I use that term loosely) were outside eating and drinking. There was definitely plenty of beer. The band brought me a bottle of Jagermeister for a gift. And later in the night Rocky cracked out a bottle of Crown Special Reserve, a bottle of Captain Morgan Silver and some other stuff.

As it started to get dark I set off the fireworks that Sal brought and then when those were gone opened the package that I bought a few days before at Wal Mart. Sal, Scooter and Band Mom helped with some of them. Amazingly no one caught fire or was even slightly injured! People started heading out around midnight and we were down to a few people, but those that stayed lasted till about 3.

Hopefully everyone had as good of a time as it seemed. I know I had a good time. Thanks to everyone who came for making my birthday very festive.